I am an evil giraffe. But I'm trying, Nick. I'm trying REAL HARD to be the wizard.

Because if you are, here is an advisory: as of this moment, if the Right catches you or your staff within 100 yards of an ACORN office or worker we will cheerfully crucify you with that organization. And by ‘crucify’ I mean ‘take the metaphorical and rhetorical equivalent of long iron nails and permanently attach you to ACORN with them.” As the above link to Jon Stewart’s appalled reaction to all of this shows, public perceptions of the group shifted, and not to the benefit of the people that like to use ACORN. Now would be a good time for individual Democratic politicians to start publicly breaking with the group, in fact.

Seriously. The San Diego video is out, and this one involves a guy talking about why Tijuana is the best place to smuggle underage El Salvadoran hookers across the border (because he has contacts there).

Expect a lot more use of the “they were just playing along” defense from ACORN, by the way: it isn’t much of a defense, but right now it’s about the only one that they have left. ACORN’s problem, of course – well, its problem is that they have an institutional culture that doesn’t bat an eye at prostitutes and would-be pimps coming in and asking for tax advice on running underage illegal brothels. So one of its problems is that when you have to concede that your group did in fact give tax advice on running an underage illegal brothel, ‘over the top’ loses much of its meaning.